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L.A. Social Workers Rally For Decreased Workload

Charlie Magovern, Kate Flexter, Sarah Zahedi |
November 5, 2013 | 3:29 p.m. PST

Staff Reporters

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About 150 social workers representing the Service Employees International Union rallied Tuesday outside the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles calling for fewer cases per worker and an increase to the size of the workforce.

The rally coincided with SIEU's lawsuit filed against the county that says social workers are taking on many more cases than the maximum agreed to in the current contract. 

David Green of the SEIU led the rally for fewer cases per social worker in Los Angeles County. (Charlie Magovern/Neon Tommy)
David Green of the SEIU led the rally for fewer cases per social worker in Los Angeles County. (Charlie Magovern/Neon Tommy)
David Green, a social worker and board member of the SEIU, said the ideal number of cases per worker is 14 (the maximum according to the contract is 31) and that the labor force is being stretched too thin.

“Right now, social workers carry double, triple, quadruple that amount of cases,” he said. “And it means less time with the kids in the schools, in the community centers, in the churches, in the homes.”

Since cutting the maximum amount of cases would leave a need for workers, the SEIU also demanded the county hire more workers to help spread out the work.

"No matter how you slice it, we need to hire additional workers to do best practice social work for all our families and kids," Green said.

Officials from L.A. County were not available for comment. 

(ATVN interviews L.A. County Social Worker David Green:)

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Sully Wantland and An-Hoa Tran, social workers who work in Compton, said having too many cases prevents them from investing the necessary time to build trust with families in order to solve the deeper sources of their problems.

“It ends up being a lot of touch-and-go social work,” said Tran. “You run in there, you hit your main points, but you don’t get to develop the personal relationship that children need. The better you know your families, the more they will tell you and you can get to the meat of the issues.”

Wantland said she regularly works upwards of 60 hours per week due to her large volume of cases and that she cannot file for overtime.

“So I take it on me to take two or three hours for the family, but it’s costing me my health,” said Wantland, who works as late as 11 p.m. some days. "If you have 40 cases, just do the numbers."





 

 

This story was produced by Annenberg's three daily media outlets, ARN, ATVN and Neon Tommy, and Strategic Public Relations Studies students conducting up-to-the-minute social media analysis.

 



 

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